AMG to be revamped starting next month

[Stone]

Dear Stone,

The new allmusic.com continues to take shape. Plans are underway for an early July launch.

In this edition of the AMG Insider we’d like to share some details about one of the most important additions to the new site — Advanced Search. One of the most requested features by our users has been expanded search capability. You’ve requested the ability to search by additional criteria such as AMG rating and birthplace, and you’ve asked to be able to search by several criteria at once. We’ve been listening, and our new Advanced Search feature will deliver your requests.

The following table lists the searches that will be available with Advanced Search. Across the top of the table are the Search Objectives — what you’re searching for. Under each Search Objective is a list of Search Criteria — what you’re searching by. Some examples of what you’ll be able to search for include:


Search for artists born on July 10th.
Search for Indie Rock albums with an AMG rating of 4 or 5.
Search for New Orleans Jazz albums released in 1950.
Search for songs written by Bernie Taupin and performed by Elton John.
Search for songs that reached number one on the Billboard Country Singles Chart in 1982.
Search for all of the biographies that mention Madonna.
Search for Classical Works composed in 1948.
Pop Music Searches
Person/Group Album Song Style Label Text Mention
Artist Name Album Title Song Title Style Label Name
Birth Date Style + Year Of Release Composer + Composer N/A N/A Album Title
Birthplace Style + Rating Composer + Performer N/A N/A N/A
Style + Instrument Billboard® Chart + Yr + Chart Position Billboard® Chart + Yr + Chart Position N/A N/A N/A
Style + Style Grammy® Award Grammy® Award N/A N/A N/A
Grammy® Award N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A


Classical Music Searches
Person/Ensemble Album Work Text Mention
Artist Name Album Title Work Title Name
Birth Date Performer + Performer Year of Copmposition N/A
Period + Genre Performer + Composer N/A N/A
N/A Performer + Work N/A N/A
N/A Performer + Performer + Performer N/A N/A
N/A Performer + Performer + Composer N/A N/A


Advanced Search opens up new paths for exploration on allmusic. Set aside some time, because once you start your search, you may find it difficult to stop.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for the launch of the new allmusic.

[Davey]

My silly, nerdy, little weekend AMG story.....

A couple weeks ago I stop by the metacritic site to see how some of my recent favorites were fairing with the critics and I noticed that the Animal Collective CD I've been high on had fallen out of the top 10 which was surprising since last I'd checked it was in the middle. Figuring it must have gotten panned by someone and curious to see whay they had to say, I clicked on it and looked at the ratings but nothing really stood out except the rather mediocre score of 70 (3.5 stars) from AMG. Well I'm no memory wizard brainiac, but I was almost certain the score had been higher before, so I checked another recent album at AMG, Franz Ferdinand, and it was rated at 70 which also seemed to be a lower score than before, but the odd thing was that metacritic showed it as having a AMG rating of 80. Ah ha, I thought, maybe I'm onto something. So I right click on some of the AMG star ratings and notice that the 3.5 and 4 star rating gif names seem to be out of numerical sequence and consequently reversed. So I pop off a quick email to let them know about it and then promptly forget about it.

Next morning I'm surprised to find they've already responded to the email and talk a bit about how they just added the 3 1/2 star rating and blah, blah, blah, but it doesn't seem like they understood what I was really saying, thinking that I was complaining about the changes instead of alerting them to what looked to me like a programming error. Someone must've picked up on it because when I checked again it was fixed. The Animal Collective rating at metacritic is still inaccurate because it hasn't been updated since grabbing the incorrect AMG rating, but I'll leave that problem for the group's media people to solve :)

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From: "AMG Response"
Subject: A Message From allmusic.com Regarding Your Feedback

Thanks for your feedback. You are very perceptive. It is true that we have recently made a small adjustment to our star rating system. The change was the addition of a 3 1/2 star rating, which up to this point had not existed. The reason for the missing 3 1/2 star rating is a matter of some debate within the company, but basically goes back to our early days. We decided it was time to correct this oddity and introduce the 3 1/2 star rating. This entailed ra re-evaluation by our editorial staff of all 4 star and 3 star albums, and moving the most marginal 4 stars to 3 1/2 stars and the most stellar 3 stars to 3 1/2 stars. That is what recently ocurred and accounts for the rating changes that you have noticed. All ratings are detrmined solely by the AMG editorial staff with no outside input.

Best Regards,

AMG

----- Original Message from davey@biteme.com on 6/16/2004 9:03 PM -----

It appears that your 3.5 star rating gif has gotten swapped with the 4 star gif

[Dusty Chalk]

Well, you have to realize that most of the people they deal with aren't so programming-savvy. So I suspect what is going on is that they responded with that in mind, but at the same time, "accidentally realized" the programming error, so they fixed that, too.

BTW, you're original comment to them did not seem to be pointing out a programming error.